The Reopening of the Joseph Carlebach School

Source Description

This source is a short article of fifty-four lines that was published in
the newsletter of Hamburg'sJewish congregation
on the occasion of the Joseph
Carlebach School's reopening in the fall of 2007. Its author is the journalist and
writer
Daniel Killy, who
also was the Jewish
congregation's spokesperson at the time.

In the article,
Killy reports
about the opening of the Joseph Carlebach School located at Grindelhof 30,
which opened its doors to 18 children attending preschool and first grade on
August 28, 2007. He describes the daily
routine and the concept of “rhythmicization,” meaning the multi-methodical
composition of the school day at this all-day school, which follows the
ideas of pedagogue
Joseph Carlebach,
for whom the school
is named. In addition to principal
Heinz Hibbeler, Killy quotes
rabbi
Shlomo
Bistritzky, who highlights the significance of this new school
for the rebuilding of Jewish life in Hamburg.

The Talmud Torah
School, 1805-1942

In 1805 the first Jewish school in Hamburg, the Talmud Torah School, was
founded in the NeustadtNew Town district. Its curriculum
primarily included traditional Jewish disciplines such as the reading and
writing of Hebrew texts or Torah
study. In subsequent decades, secular subjects, and especially German, were also
incorporated into the canon in order to open up new ways of earning a living to
poor children in particular. 1911 saw the move to the
new schoolhouse in the Grindel neighborhood, where the majority of Hamburg's Jews lived by
then. During the National
Socialist period, the Talmud Torah School was renamed “grade school and secondary school for Jews”Volks- und Höhere
Schule für Juden. In 1939 students and teachers had to leave the
building and attend school at the schoolhouse on Karolinenstraße instead. In June 1942 the Talmud Torah School, like all
other Jewish schools in Germany, was closed for good. Hundreds of students and numerous
teachers were deported. After the end of the Second World War, the
building was initially used by the British occupation forces before being handed over to the
Hamburg
school authority. Beginning in 1966, it housed the Hamburg technical
college's faculty for library sciences.

The new beginning as Joseph
Carlebach School

When the building was handed over to the Jewish congregation almost
forty years later, in 2004, it was in very poor
condition. Extensive renovations had to be undertaken before the school could be
(re)opened in the summer of 2007. It was named after
the former principal and later chief
rabbi, Joseph
Carlebach, who had reformed the school fundamentally in the
1920s. Under his
leadership the ideas of reform pedagogy were introduced into the school. These
included the introduction of modern subjects and teaching methods such as
independent experiments, project work, or the integration of arts and exercise
into the curriculum. Class trips and performances, too, now became part of the
school routine and played their part in loosening up the strictly authoritarian
relationship existing between students and teachers up until then.

This tradition was to be continued at the new school at Grindelhof, as
principal
Heinz Hibbeler emphasizes: "We want to take up
the work of the great pedagogue
Joseph Carlebach –
whose methods of self-directed learning and reform pedagogy serve as an example
for us." At the time the article was written, Hibbeler was 62 years old and had many years of
experience as a pedagogue and
principal. Until he was appointed to head the Joseph Carlebach School, he
had been principal of a comprehensive school Gesamtschule in Hamburg. The city's
school authority had granted him a reduction of
working hours to enable him to participate in the conception and founding of the
new Jewish school. According to him, Joseph Carlebach's ideas are
reflected in the school routine: "A challenging period of learning is always
followed by a phase of recreation through sports or playtime." Hibbeler refers to the innovations Carlebach introduced to the
school routine in his day: he had drawing lessons redesigned, he introduced
workshop class and strengthened musical education by establishing a school
orchestra, for example. Moreover, he had a new gymnasium built in order to give
students more opportunity for exercise and recreation through sports.

The Joseph Carlebach
School as a Jewish School in Hamburg

The central focus of the programmatic new orientation under Joseph Carlebach was a
synthesis of Jewish and general education, however. Students were supposed to
receive an extensive secular education and yet be raised in a decidedly Jewish
manner in order to become acquainted with Jewish religion and culture in all its
facets and thus feel confirmed in their Jewish identity. For Carlebach, Jewish education
was a fundamental precondition for ensuring the continued existence of
Hamburg’s
Jewish community.

Rabbi
Shlomo Bistritzky
also particularly emphasizes this aspect. Bistritzky was born in
Jerusalem in
1977 and studied in New York, Manchester, and
Berlin
before being ordained as a rabbi. In 2003 he came to Hamburg, the birthplace of his grandfather Loeb who was born in 1926,
as a representative of the Jewish organization Chabad-Lubavitch. His
grandfather had attended the Jewish school at Grindelhof before
he and his family had to leave Germany to flee from
National Socialist persecution. For Shlomo Bistritzky, the
opening of the new Jewish
school, of whose advisory board he is a member, was an event that
touched him personally. In the article published in the congregation newsletter,
he points out the special significance the Joseph Carlebach School has
for the Jewish
community: "With this school we want to contribute to the rebuilding of Jewish life in
Hamburg and
teach Jewish tradition and atmosphere." He specifically mentions the shared kosher lunch as a connecting
ritual: "The children are not only supposed to learn about Jewish symbols, but
especially about their meaning. The subject of Jewish religion is a central part
of the curriculum."

This shows that for Shlomo
Bistritzky, the Jewish school was a central element in the establishment and
development of the Jewish community in Hamburg, which has
about 3,500 members at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Contrary to the 1920s, when Joseph Carlebach sought to
strengthen Jewish identity and secure the continued existence of the
congregation, children today are supposed to learn about Jewish rituals and
traditions in the first place. A large share of the community’s members hail from
the territories of the former Soviet Union, where
they usually could not get to know or practice their religion. For
Rabbi
Shlomo Bistritzky,
the Joseph Carlebach
School therefore provides an opportunity to introduce the children
of these migrants to the Jewish faith and to strengthen the congregation in the
long term.

Criticism and conflicts regarding Jewish education at the school

This position is in line with the goals of the Chabad movementShlomo Bistritzky
belongs to and which is very influential in many Jewish communities in
Germany,
especially in the area of child rearing. It is an Orthodox movement within
Judaism that is active worldwide and dispatches "emissaries" (shlichim) to communities in order to strengthen or
revive Jewish community life there. Due to its organizational structure and
strictly Orthodox orientation as well as its messianic tendencies, Chabad has repeatedly come
under criticism especially in Germany. As the article
hints at, there was conflict between Hamburg's Jewish community
and the Chabad movement
as well. Principal
Heinz Hibbeler demands that the school must
stay out of congregational disagreements. "The school must be able to develop
freely, a Jewish school in Hamburg is overdue." To which Shlomo Bistritzky adds:
"Once parents see that a good school exists here, they will send their children
to us." This illustrates what reservations might exist against a school that is
influenced by a rabbi belonging to Chabad-Lubavitch. In this
context, the fact that Hamburg's
Chief Rabbi at the time, Dov-Levy
Barsilay, is mentioned in the article but, in contrast to
Bistritzky, is
not quoted, seems like a conspicuous absence. This might be an indication of the
conflict between the two different orientations within Hamburg's Jewish community
that escalated only a few months after the opening of the Joseph Carlebach School and
eventually led to Barsilay's dismissal. Three years later, Shlomo Bistritzky was
elected Hamburg's new Chief Rabbi. This article
shows that as early as 2007, he had influence on the
education of Jewish children and youths in Hamburg in his function
as an advisory board member and that his voice was heard in
the Jewish community.

Since its founding the Joseph
Carlebach School has become increasingly popular. Today more than
160 students attend the school at >Grindelhof, where
in the summer of 2017 it will be possible for the first
time in eighty years to graduate with a general certificate of secondary
education mittlerer Schulabschluss.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.

About the Author

Stephanie Kowitz-Harms, Dr. phil, wrote her dissertation about “Shoah im Spiegel öffentlicher Konflikte in Polen, 1985-2001” and was project manager of the particapatory school project “Geschichtomat” (www.geschichtomat.de) at the Institute for the History of the German Jews for three years. She works as freelance project manager for education-projects.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.